In comparing Howard and Alar ask THIS question-

many teams passed on allar in the draft. if he goes to the PS do you really think a team will waste a roster spot for a kid that had to be broken down to a complete rebuild? if they did i don't see him lasting all year on their roster. once is taken off that roster spot he could be brought back like castro last year. i see mason as one of the best backups available. even if he's 3rd string he will be more help to howard and give us a better depth player. is allar better than who we could draft next year?

 

I think if they put him on the PS, someone would pick him up immediately, especially with the emergency QB rule not counting against your roster on game day. The Steelers have to keep him on the active roster.

 

You can protect players on the PS from getting poached, if I understand things. I seem to remember a team picks 4 PS players to protect for the week on Tuesdays. I guess that protects them through the Monday Night game.
I would expect 4 QBs to be kept with one being designated protected PS player.

 

I think they can still be poached between the time their last game ended and the Tuesday deadline.

 

I think it would be pretty odd to draft a guy you're excited about as a potential franchise QB and put him on the practice squad. Just to keep Rudolph? Eh. I'd trade/let go Rudolph.

If we're in rebuild mode as many seem to believe, why are we so worried about a veteran backup QB? Either Rodgers stays healthy and gets us into a possible playoff spot or he doesn't and one of our rookies gets to showcase his talent. I'm good with that. I don't see any excitement in keeping Rudolph as a "serviceable backup" at this point unless McCarthy is somehow convinced he could win a playoff game if the need arose.

 

You still have to cut the guy to get him to the practice squad. The Steelers aren't doing this with Allar. They might try it with Howard, but no way they do it with the guy they just spent a high third-round pick on knowing he was likely a bit of a project.

 

No question adding a great receiver improved stats. Always does. But there's been a lot written about how much Allen's mechanics have changed since college. He put real effort into it and had great coaching and it made a significant difference. Even without Diggs, he continued to improve.

 

True. But not what was being discussed. The previous posts were talking about Allar already on the PS and would he be a guy a team would poach since they would then have to sign him to their 53.
I was just pointing out that players on the PS can be protected each week.
@Aerosteel asks a valid question I don't currently know the answer for. If the team plays on Sunday, does the protected player lose protection once the game ends, and can then be poached?

 

What I found says the protection ends at 4pm ET on Tuesday each week. I guess this gives the team the option to extend the protection each week without the player getting poached, or decide to risk it for a week.

 

and then the coach was fired.

I’m sorry, I think Allen is a very talented player but I do not believe he put in ton’s of work for his accuracy to jump dramatically when he got Diggs the same year it jumped.

 

Did his accuracy drop off when Diggs left?

Despite living in Bills country, I don't really watch them.

I don't think they really had much in the way of WRs last year. I can see that he had the highest completion percentage of his career while still having an adjusted air yards per pass of 8.1 (3rd highest of his career: 8.5, 8.3, 8.1).

Like I said, I don't watch him live much. But I think this suggests that if he got it from playing with Diggs, it seems like he learned things that stuck.

In 2024 (his first year without Diggs), he had a completion percentage of 63.6% (a little below his career average of 64.0%) and AY/A of 7.7 (above his career average of 7.4).

But you're right that the year he got Diggs, lots of metrics sky rocketed: comp% 58.8% to 69.25%, succ% 41.7% to 56.5% (career high), AY/A 6.7 to 8.5 (career high).

Those numbers all reverted to the mean in 2021. But he did see a huge improvement they year they got Diggs.

 

I'm going to side-eye your side-eye then

There are dozens of articles outlining what he changed in his mechanics and the effort he put into it.